Forum:New nav bar, new approach to videos

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On 3 October 2012, the entirety of Wikia switches over to a different sort of top-of-page navigation. If you've been to w:c:community or many other wikis, you will have already seen this in action. We won't be switching before we absolutely have to, though, because of some fairly heavy modifications that must be done with it to make it fit in with our theme.

On 3 October, you will also note some other, slight changes to the layout, but they are mostly of assistance to the Wikia dev team and have few implications for us. If, however, you're used to making tables or other design elements that fill the entire content area, note that the new content width area is 670px. The new right rail width is 330px.

We'll also be experiencing massive changes to the RelatedVideos module on that date. As we're a beta tester for that feature, we're gonna hang onto it for a bit to see how these changes shake out. Basically, every page is once again gonna contain every video on the site. However, there are supposed to be some new tools coming which make it easier to embed the videos in the main body of pages. It's a bit vague at the moment, but we'll see how it shakes out.
czechout ☎ ✍  20:18: Thu 20 Sep 2012

so this is where i can say what i think of the new navbar? well, i must admit that i don't think it looks nearly as nice as the last one. it kind of looks out of place, as if it has just been put hovering in the middle because there was nowhere else for it to go. i think it would be nicer if its background was opaque. then it might look like it belongs more. or maybe it would look better if the gallifreyan script decoration behind it is removed. looking at some other wikis who don't have anything behind it, it actually looks quite good. just my opinions, but i do think it needs some style adjustments at the moment. Imamadmad ☎ 06:52, September 24, 2012 (UTC)

Yep, I agree it doesn't look as good as what we had before. At the end of the day, no matter how you style it, it's a big block of stuff which doesn't allow for much white space. From a design standpoint, it's a pretty big ask to make it actually look good. The best we can hope for, I think, is "interesting". And I think you do tend to notice our new design. Even if you don't like it, you probably are gonna click it.

Still, like you, I wish we could have just kept the old navigation. But we didn't have that option. I probably will be tinkering with it for a bit to come, especially with regards to the opacity — though, in the short term, I really need to get back to some other projects. Also, it was an unadvertised "surprise" that enabling New Nav forced changes in other parts of the page. I have to correct those first before doing any more work on the New Nav itself.

The main goal at this stage was simply to have something which looked reasonably good in time for the 3 October deadline. Given the fact that almost nobody changes the default for this feature, information on how to alter it is not commonly available within the larger Wikia community. The current design was painstakingly reverse-engineered. Look on it not so much as a final design as the method by which I discovered how to style it. If you or anyone has specific requests about ideas for changing the design, I'm now in a better position to "take requests" as it were. I'm not really a fan of giving up on the transparency/Gallifreyan script entirely, though. I think it's a matter of finding the right level of opacity.
czechout ☎ ✍  04:21: Tue 25 Sep 2012

I'd also point out that a number of changes have been made since your post. I think if you look at it on this page, which has a grey background, it fits in a lot better. It seems, to my eye, to be quite organic here. I think I'm going to have to make one color palate for the grey pages, and one for the blue.
czechout ☎ ✍  04:24: Tue 25 Sep 2012